Saturday, December 10, 2011

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich got himself into hot water yesterday by publicly asserting that the “Palestinians” are an invented ethnicity. Mr. Gingrich correctly pointed out that there was never a separate nation characterized its own language and culture in “Palestine”, just a multiethnic province of the Ottoman Empire. But that truth didn’t go down too well with the “world community”.

In other news, due to the population distortions caused by China’s one-child policy, more and more young women are being smuggled into the country to be sold as sex slaves or wives. Most of them come from Vietnam, Laos, and other nations in Southeast Asia.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Insubria, JP, J-PD, KGS, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

I just looked at the entire video of the debate. All the candidates supported Israel, but only Gingrich knew what he was talking about. Ron Paul also knew some Middle Eastern history, but took the view that the differences between Israel and the Muslim countries were of little interest to the US.

Gingrich is bright, knowledgeable, and very familiar with the issues. Milton Freedman was asked once why he supported the Republicans. He said they weren't any more principled than the Democrats, but at least they understood what he was talking about.

I think it is a mistake to support a President based solely on the consistency of his positions over a 30 year career, or over the purity of his philosophy. A politician needs a streak of pragmatism.

So this RINO, this Obama light, who has been as faithful to the Conservative movement as he has been to his multiple wives, this left-wing GOP Newt, says something about fake Palestinians, and bam.. all is forgiven and forgotten? This is astonishing.

Perhaps, to some, it didn't even matter in the first place that this man is the establishment's incarnation of an unprincipled hypocrite.

Newt being historically correct regarding Palestine doesn't automatically translate into his ability to do anything about the problem.

Herein the GOP's problem. Which candidate has the ability to actually do something?

The first question is, which candidates have their own original ideas, and which ones are speaking form a scrpited playbook?

Second question is, which candidate has the clout to actually make things better?

Newt's rhetoric is right on target and he has original ideas. Unfortunately his track record is one of populism, not conservatism. Romney has the same problem.

On the other hand, the true conservative candidates all come off as speaking from a scripted play-book... and who knows what they have in context of originality once in office?

Huntsman and Santorum have actual conservative political histories, and they can't get their words in edgewise in the media or the polling.

Hard to figure out where GOP voters are at right now, and no clue what the so-called Independents are thinking. Since liberal Independents are leaving the Democrat party like rats off a sinking ship, they're not yet jumping on the GOP barge either.

So, as for now, Obama's chance of re-election look pretty good. All he needs to do is keep his mouth shut and let the GOP tear itself apart.

Oh, there will be no letting alone of the Republican party to tear themselves apart. The media will utterly destroy whichever candidate that gets the nomination. If it's Gingrich, they'll barely need to even try. His record is bad enough, but his various sound-bites will so demoralize conservatives and so enrage progressives as to make it possible that he'll simply give up and concede before the election.

Funnily enough I don't recall anyone claiming that because Gingrich said this one thing he was the new great hope, automatically should be the Republicans' nominee, etc etc.

What is interesting is that anyone at all said something like that. And the reaction it brought about.

The usual suspects' reactions at the mere thought of someone who might possibly be where Obama is now standing up and telling the Pallies and their cohorts that they're full of it is apparently enough to give them all the heebie-jeebies.

I think that one of the candidates declined to 'distance' himself from the statement. All the others danced around with saying that it was true but impolitic.

I myself say that it is not really making it clear what we are talking about. The issue is not whether "Palestinians" are an invention...all nations and cultures are invented. The Americans and Spartans not only admitted that their nations were invented but kept the patent records crediting their inventors.

The issue is the "right of return". This "right of return" is based on the fact that most of the 'Palestinians' are descended from people who once lived inside of Israel. For a very few of them it is because their ancestors lived in the area for centuries. For most the reason was because, after the region was set aside to allow the Jews to build a nation in their ancient homeland, it was a significantly more prosperous country than the surrounding nations.

The reason that they aren't living there now is because, in 1967, the surrounding Arab nations told the Arabs living in Israel that it would be a war of total extermination, they were planning to wipe out the Jews completely, and it would be easier to do this if there were not a lot of Arabs (particularly Muslims) in the area. Some Arabs stayed, they had real jobs and perhaps they thought it was a little immoral to lend support to a program of genocide, or at least they didn't want to go to a lot of bother to support it.

But most of the Arabs (particularly the Muslims) left. They stood aside and counted on the promise that, after the Jews were exterminated, they would have everything in the nation (Muslims don't seem to understand that blowing things up makes them lose value in real world economic terms). And based on that, their gross betrayal of their hosts to a program of planned genocide, they claim that they have a "right of return" to Israel.

This is what needs to be discussed, not the rather infantile question of whether nations are 'invented' or somehow happen without human intervention.